By request—following similar extensions for Flash and Illustrator—here’s an extension for InDesign that merges multiple textframes into one, while retaining the original styles.

Because of properties within InDesign, this extension is actually the most powerful of the three. It accepts characters in the separator field for hard returns, soft returns, and tabs (as well as any combination of any other standard characters).

There are also options in the dialog box that control the size of the textframe once it’s been merged (see the variations in the graphic down the page).

Download and instructions below…

Download

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Running from the Scripts panel

Locate the MergeTextframes_ID.jsxbin script in the Scripts panel and double-click to run the script. If you installed the script using the CC installer or the MXP file, the script with be in the Ajar Productions subfolder.

Choose options from the dialog

If you’re running InDesign CS4 or newer you will be prompted with a dialog box. The dialog box will allow you to select the orientation of the sorting (top, left, bottom, right), use a custom separator character(s), and select options to fit the merged textframe once complete.

Frame fitting options

Update (6/13/2017)

Version 2.0 adds the following highly-requested features

Single-step undo

Saves and restores previous settings

Lets you merge text frames that are part of a linked story

Plus a CC-friendly installer. 🙂

Update (3/02/2010)

Version 1.1.0 now has the ability to batch-merge textframes within every page of the current document. I had several requests for something like this (including from a recent donor). Here it is! The download links above have been updated.

The new version now has the “Apply to” and “Ignore locked layers” as shown in the image below.

Note that any warning messages about having too few textframes selected have been delayed until after the dialog box appears to reflect the new options.

I am trying to run the script across multiple pages of text boxes using the “all pages” feature, but the script will only combine 1 page of text boxes at a time. (I get the error but the script does actually do its job for one page.) Subsequent pages can also be done, but each page saves into its own separate text box. I have dozens of pages so this is somewhat helpful but I was hoping to wind up with one single text box with text from every single page. Can you help!!?? I am running CS6 on Windows 7

Ah, that is how it’s supposed to work. It merges all the text frames on each page, but does not merge across pages. So, if you had 2 text frames on the 2nd page, those would be merged together, but would not be moved to the 1st page.

Using this nice little script with CC2017. Works like a charm with two text boxes. Inserting hard return in the prefs and between the two text boxes it inserts this hard return. But as soon as I select 3 or more text boxes, it does not insert this return. The last line of box 1 continues with first line of box 2 etc. …

Tested some more, that was incorrect. It works – UNLESS the text frame has text overflow (ie. little red plus in bottom right corner) – if the text frame is too small it does NOT insert the hard return… 🙂

Hi, I just downloaded MergeText yesterday and I’m building a school directory with data supplied via spreadsheet. I’m using InDesign CC 2017’s data merge function and can only get useful merges if I do a single entry per page. In this case, that’s 241 pages with stand-alone, unlinked text boxes. While MergeText does great if I set the a few pages as spreads and links the frames I selected, it does nothing at all if I choose the entire document option. That option is clearly my best choice, if only I could get it to work. Any suggestions?

Hi Roy,
Not sure what the problem is without looking at the document. If you merge the entire page and assign a shortcut to the script, you should be able to run all 241 pages relatively quickly (the panel will save your settings each time). It’s not as fast as the document option, but it will probably be quicker than having me look through your file.

I love the script and want to thank you for creating it. It is quite helpful.

My question is, will there ever be a version that also includes images into the merge?

We use a program called Catalog Builder that creates Indesign documents from a database. However, instead of creating a flowed Indesign document with one text box, the output is a 5-column page comprised of many text boxes and product photos in their own image box. When I select a column to merge using your script, all the text boxes combine as they are supposed to, but the images stay where they are on the page and do not get included in the merge. I then have to cut and paste each image into it’s appropriate spot within the merged text box. This can be quite time consuming when dealing with many pages. I hope I explained that clearly enough. Again though, thank you for this very helpful script!